DCPS is getting $555 million in capital funding for renovations, charters are getting $187 million. Ok, DCPS has big, old buildings that can’t move. Do they need $368 million more? Yearly?

Plus we have to also pay their $59 million (yearly) in trash and electric bills suddenly in addition to the per pupil expense AND a $555 million capital budget? AND another $25 million for the IMPACT bonuses?

Meanwhile we are cutting $180 million from the day care system pay equity fund, freezing the charter facilities fund at $187 million and of course making charters pay their own bills.

It is just too much money going to DCPS. Put the $59 million in utilities back into the budget. Freeze the charter facilities allotment. Cut $120mil from that huge $555mil budget (or cut just $100 million and trash IMPACT). Bam, pay equity fund restored, and not a cent more given to charter schools.

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Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

It shows much more crowded charters are, and also how DC will spend $100 million renovating schools that are deeply under-subscribed. But the comments were specifically in response to skepticism that any DCPS schools were "comically oversized."

Wut?

Comparing 1 cherry-picked charter to 1 cherry-picked DCPS school does not "show" anything.'

What was Cardozo's enrollment 20 years ago? That might say something about DC's spending habits 15 years ago. Modernizations this decade? Now those would be relevant.

Maybe read the thread and try again?

You're a bottomless well of excuses. Let me guess: You work for DCPS?

I didn't make any excuses.

I am just entertained by this "but Cardozo! but Ballou!" justification for "the city owes ME!"

It's poor argumentation. Use real and relevant data and better logic.

The money should go where the kids are. This thing DC does where it spends a gazillion dollars on schools with 300 students just because they're DCPS and then neglects charters even if that's where the kids are is f'd up. I think it's probably easy for parents who live east of the park to underestimate how important charters are to the rest of the city.

On the contrary, living in charter-happy Ward 5 has made me realize that some are great, many are meh, and some are appalling.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

It shows much more crowded charters are, and also how DC will spend $100 million renovating schools that are deeply under-subscribed. But the comments were specifically in response to skepticism that any DCPS schools were "comically oversized."

Wut?

Comparing 1 cherry-picked charter to 1 cherry-picked DCPS school does not "show" anything.'

What was Cardozo's enrollment 20 years ago? That might say something about DC's spending habits 15 years ago. Modernizations this decade? Now those would be relevant.

Maybe read the thread and try again?

You're a bottomless well of excuses. Let me guess: You work for DCPS?

I didn't make any excuses.

I am just entertained by this "but Cardozo! but Ballou!" justification for "the city owes ME!"

It's poor argumentation. Use real and relevant data and better logic.

The money should go where the kids are. This thing DC does where it spends a gazillion dollars on schools with 300 students just because they're DCPS and then neglects charters even if that's where the kids are is f'd up. I think it's probably easy for parents who live east of the park to underestimate how important charters are to the rest of the city.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

It shows much more crowded charters are, and also how DC will spend $100 million renovating schools that are deeply under-subscribed. But the comments were specifically in response to skepticism that any DCPS schools were "comically oversized."

Wut?

Comparing 1 cherry-picked charter to 1 cherry-picked DCPS school does not "show" anything.'

What was Cardozo's enrollment 20 years ago? That might say something about DC's spending habits 15 years ago. Modernizations this decade? Now those would be relevant.

Maybe read the thread and try again?

You're a bottomless well of excuses. Let me guess: You work for DCPS?

I didn't make any excuses.

I am just entertained by this "but Cardozo! but Ballou!" justification for "the city owes ME!"

It's poor argumentation. Use real and relevant data and better logic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

It shows much more crowded charters are, and also how DC will spend $100 million renovating schools that are deeply under-subscribed. But the comments were specifically in response to skepticism that any DCPS schools were "comically oversized."

Wut?

Comparing 1 cherry-picked charter to 1 cherry-picked DCPS school does not "show" anything.'

What was Cardozo's enrollment 20 years ago? That might say something about DC's spending habits 15 years ago. Modernizations this decade? Now those would be relevant.

Maybe read the thread and try again?

Since you asked, Cardozo had 814 students in 2004. It was renovated in 2019 at a cost of $158 million, which in today's dollars is $209 million.

Um, the Cardozo renovation happened 2011-2013.

Interwebs say it was $100 million.

The descriptions of the project on construction/architect websites say it housed 1,100 students at the time "across several programs," whatever that means.

The more pertinent question is what were they supposed to do about the large square footage? It was 100?year old historic building. They couldn't just let it crumble, nor could they shrink it.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

It shows much more crowded charters are, and also how DC will spend $100 million renovating schools that are deeply under-subscribed. But the comments were specifically in response to skepticism that any DCPS schools were "comically oversized."

Wut?

Comparing 1 cherry-picked charter to 1 cherry-picked DCPS school does not "show" anything.'

What was Cardozo's enrollment 20 years ago? That might say something about DC's spending habits 15 years ago. Modernizations this decade? Now those would be relevant.

Maybe read the thread and try again?

Since you asked, Cardozo had 814 students in 2004. It was renovated in 2019 at a cost of $158 million, which in today's dollars is $209 million.

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

It shows much more crowded charters are, and also how DC will spend $100 million renovating schools that are deeply under-subscribed. But the comments were specifically in response to skepticism that any DCPS schools were "comically oversized."

Wut?

Comparing 1 cherry-picked charter to 1 cherry-picked DCPS school does not "show" anything.'

What was Cardozo's enrollment 20 years ago? That might say something about DC's spending habits 15 years ago. Modernizations this decade? Now those would be relevant.

Maybe read the thread and try again?

You're a bottomless well of excuses. Let me guess: You work for DCPS?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

It shows much more crowded charters are, and also how DC will spend $100 million renovating schools that are deeply under-subscribed. But the comments were specifically in response to skepticism that any DCPS schools were "comically oversized."

Wut?

Comparing 1 cherry-picked charter to 1 cherry-picked DCPS school does not "show" anything.'

What was Cardozo's enrollment 20 years ago? That might say something about DC's spending habits 15 years ago. Modernizations this decade? Now those would be relevant.

Maybe read the thread and try again?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

It shows much more crowded charters are, and also how DC will spend $100 million renovating schools that are deeply under-subscribed. But the comments were specifically in response to skepticism that any DCPS schools were "comically oversized."

I am fine with teachers getting paid a lot. Our charter has lower salaries but is also top-heavy with administrators and has way more non-IEP-related aides than DCPS would allow. So I don't think it's unfair.

Anonymous wrote:I am a charter parent and my kids' charter school is fine. I am fine with DCPS having nice buildings.

I think the charter sector wastes a ton of money operating crappy half-empty schools and if we had far fewer charter schools we could spend more money on the ones that are succeeding. The PCSB authorizes crap and monitors crap and puts crap on probation and only after millions and millions has been spent operating and overseeing crap does it even consider shutting anything down. The PCSB should shut down failing schools and then cut its own budget.

Totally agree
- former charter parent

I am a charter parent and my kids' charter school is fine. I am fine with DCPS having nice buildings.

I think the charter sector wastes a ton of money operating crappy half-empty schools and if we had far fewer charter schools we could spend more money on the ones that are succeeding. The PCSB authorizes crap and monitors crap and puts crap on probation and only after millions and millions has been spent operating and overseeing crap does it even consider shutting anything down. The PCSB should shut down failing schools and then cut its own budget.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?

Nothing, the charter donors are here posing as concerned parents.

Cause as a parent of a charter student, none of this is concerning to me. My child loves going to school and is learning.

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Anonymous wrote:Charter school parents: We want DC to way over-spend on our facilities too (albeit without the big gratuity to developers). Any money that WTU negotiates for their dues-paying teachers is owed to our teachers too. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS has failed us. We *have to* go to charters because DCPS is violent. We can't take any students that have to or want to leave other charters; DCPS needs to take those. Even as we take away half the kids from DCPS, we don't want to have any part is helping solve the messes that DCPS has to deal with -- that is other kids' problem.

Basically, we want the equality for all the good stuff but avoidance for all the difficult parts.

More like…

DC charter parents: Follow the law which says funding parity.

DCPS: But we have to pay our teachers more, they are in a union. Your teachers aren’t in unions so they shouldn’t make as much. We also get no money for buildings, they come from the DGS fairy. Why do you need money for facilities?

Some of them are in unions though.

They do get a facilities allotment. Explicitly. Have your opinion but please stop spreading false information.

Does that $2000 per kid for charters equal $5 billion for DCPS? Absolutely not! What is DCPS spending on Tubman, $200k per kid? And they will provide maintenance going forward.

I don't now where the $5 billion figure comes from.

However, $2000 x 50,000 students x 20 years = $2 billion, so that's real money.

DC has spent $3.6 billion renovating DCPS schools, and plans to send another $2 billion more.

Ok, we know some of that was ill-spent (the effort to make underenrolled high schools appealing), some inefficiently spent (yay Bowser and her developer friends), some spent to benefit the community in addition to the schools (pools), and some spent initiatives to benefit the community that make no diffetence to the kids (energy efficiency).

We also know that DCPS has to deal with the schools already has, that can't easily reject a difficult property.

Charter schools would surely spend more efficiently can choose properties that make most sense in this era, amd need not worry about investments for the larger community. So presumably they need less money for the same number of students over at the same time.

Is the current allocation fair? I don't know. Maybe not. But I do know that you need more complete information to make a meaningful comparison.

How? They already have buildings. Just like DCPS. Do better.

Some charters have bought or leased buildings in the past 20 years. Others are still expanding or plan to move. None are tied to properties they acquired 50 or 100 years ago.

Oh stop. DCPS is building Taj Mahals. They spent almost $200 million on Duke Ellington, which has maybe 600 students. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as a fancy charter school in Washington D.C.

The Duke Ellington renovations were a complete abuse of taxpayers. We all should have been mad -- and we were. For anyone who missed it, here's a good, short article on the fiasco: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/taxpayers-pay-millions-for-over-budgeted-school-renovations/65-474821677

It's still not clear what mismanagement--and possibly graft--last decade has to do with funding schools now.

So have any palaces been built in recent years? I haven't seen it. Banneker is looking great, but was not bonkers like Ellington.

Seems like the process has been tightened up. Maybe somebody here can share details?

Tightened up? DC is spreading the money far and wide (at least for DCPS) and thinks nothing of spending $100 million on a school with 500 kids.

Duke Ellington -- $180 million
Coolidge -- $160 million
Jackson-Reid -- $130 million
Dunbar -- $125 million
Roosevelt -- $125 million
Woodson -- $100 million
Tubman -- $100 million
Deal -- $100 million
JO Wilson -- $91 million
Cardozo -- $90 million
Deal -- $90 million
Ballou -- $90 million
Jefferson -- $90 million
Burrville -- $85 million
Truesdell -- $80 million
Oyster Adams -- $79 million
Burroughs -- $75 million
Janney -- $70 million
MLK -- $65 million
Dorothy Height -- $63 million
Garfield -- $60.5 million
Anacostia -- $60 million

And some of these schools are tiny! Garfield has 252 students. Anacostia High School only has 250 students. Burrville has 232 students. Burroughs has 331.

DCPS MUST serve them. Charters don’t have to serve anyone.

These schools should be closed and consolidated. We should not spending $85 million on a school with 200 students. If the families are abandoning these schools for charters, the money should follow those children to the charters.

This has happened in the past only for DCPS to have to open up again.
If you look at the Ed spec of the renovations the capacity is usually only 500 students.

DCPS schools aren’t large enough to absorb 300 or even 100 more students.

For example if Burroughs closed Langdon would probably have to absorb most of them and they cannot.

What would likely happen is CHARTERS would absorb many. I’m sure some charter proponents would just love that haha.

Some of the DCPS schools are comically oversized. Ballou is 350,000 square feet. It has 597 students. That's about the same size as Jackson Reid, which has 2,000 students.

Thank you for a single example. I cannot find any recent ones. To say DCPS or charters don’t make mistakes would be an understatement.

Charters do buy new buildings, where is the data to show they are struggling with decrepit buildings at a higher rate than DCPS?

Anacostia High School is 250,000 square feet. It has 250 students.

DCI is 180,000 square feet. It has 1,700 students.

Latin on 2nd Street is 65,000 square feet. It has 700 students.

Cardozo is 370,000 square feet. It has 710 students.

Cardozo was built and 1917 and had its last modernization well before Latin 2nd Street opened.

Anyone know what peak enrollment was at Cardozo over the years?

Anyone know what was spent on the renovation of Latin 2nd Street?

what exactly are we proving here by comparing apples and oranges?